Pittsburgh Guy: Driving across Wyoming

After filling up at the Donut Ranch

we left Saratoga for Jackson Hole. The weather hadn't cleared and seemed to follow us. It was cold and overcast with snow squalls. We stayed on the two lane road for 20 miles until we hit I-80. The drive on the interstate was rough. The speed limit is 75 and people tend to go a lot faster. Just as in Pennsylvania, 80 in Wyoming is a truck route. Our rental car is a small Saturn Ion. It was windy and dreary. The trucks shot snow and ice on our windshield and our wipers froze over. The visibility was scary bad. The drive was tense. We did see some very interesting rock formations in the stretch east of Rock Spring. At Rock Spring we got off of the Interstate and headed north on the two lane black top, 191, which leads through Jackson and to Yellowstone. Towns were few and far between. Those towns were tiny with populations between 100 and 300. Luckily the weather cleared. We came to a bigger town (pop. 1700), Pinedale, and stopped for lunch. It had the feel of a western diner. My wife had a cheeseburger and I had a quesadilla. As is required at a diner we had homemade pie ala mode, which as is always the case, looked better than it tasted. We noticed there were a lot of energy workers eating at the diner who were living in motels in town. They obviously were from out of town. We learned there is an energy boom in Wyoming, which includes a pipeline through the state.

After lunch we still had about an hour and a half to Jackson. The drive turned beautiful as we

rode through the Teton National Forest. We stopped at a scenic view and saw a father and son fishing on the Hoback River. We also saw a heard of Big Horn Sheep on a hillside across the river. We stopped. I got out to take pictures and walked to a spot directly across the river from the wild sheep. As if they spotted me they came running down the hill toward me. Their real motivation was not to ham it up for the camera, but to get a drink of water from the river.